|
HOME : INDEX : OFTENER PARTICLE . 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 . 7 . 8 . 9 . 10 . 11 . 12 : &c.
Xerox is DeadMay 27, 1997WE COME to tell you that xerox art-for the purposes of my previous projects-is dead and good as gone. We're reasonably certain that you're not surprised (assuming you were aware such a thing existed in the first place). When we started publishing PhotoStatic in 1983, the Internet existed, but almost nobody had heard of it. The do-it-yourself modus was all the rage. We were fresh from punk and in the middle of industrial music, high on the cusp of the "independent" scene in music, film, and cultural work generally. We were comfortable having machines in our lives, and we were comfortable doing our work on them. It's easy to forget that that wasn't so long ago. We've known the rules of perspective since the renaissance; nonetheless, it's still all too easy to lose one's sense of them. PhotoStatic existed (at first, anyway) as a self-proclaimed flagship for electrostatic art (a more generic term than "xerox art"). If you'd scratched the surface, you'd have found that xerox was simply the means to a more general end. We waved it like a banner; it was the bunting on our podium from which we proclaimed a new graphic world order in which independent production using means of cheap reproduction would play a key role. Xerox. Cassette. VHS. Even fax. These were the planks in our platform. Oh, sure, there were all the usual "U.S. out of Nicaragua," "Silence=Death," "An End to the Oppression of [insert favorite oppressed group here]" and all that predictable stuff. Many of us urgently wanted to deal with social problems in our work; to say something "real." More often than not, this amounted to saying things loudly that no one in their right public mind would dare contradict. The singling out of "political" issues to claim that a group was being oppressed was often counterproductive, divisive, and failed to recognize that we are all oppressed. It's just plain existential. This situation persists to a degree. We still do not have enough time to talk and say everything about how we feel about the world. One thing has changed: the xerox machine, the audio cassette, and more slowly, even video have been replaced by a new constellation of devices arrayed around the personal computer. Photoshop has replaced the gluestick and the exacto knife as the preferred tool. We're still here doing what we do; but now we do it more quickly, easily, efficiently, and with a greater articulation and refinement of form than was possible before. We appreciate this, but we mistrust it as well. The "gee-whiz" esthetic is alive and well, and we must keep our bullshit detectors on high. An afternoon spent looking at websites makes one sympathetic to the idea that self-discipline is not such a bad thing after all. Art benefits, probably, from certain limits imposed on it by its tools. These limits lay bare possibilities and help to impose structure on the work. We humans are probably only as resourceful as we need to be. Updated October 2, 1997.
August 13, 1997Death of Xerox Art, A Second OpinionWe got involved with the Internet not long after you started publishing Photostatic Magazine back in the early and mid 80s. In 1985, Usenet news snuck onto research networks was a method of public production libraries, cheap reproduction, and mass distribution across international boundaries. Fast modems, cheap disk drives, unsuspecting scientific networks, even mag tapes delivered in station wagons. These were the planks in our platform.
Then the world found the net. Usenet and chat rooms replaced television as the nation's favorite tool for self-hypnosis. We appreciate the wider access, the cheaper and faster services, the new color and graphics and sound, but we mistrust it. Just because you have 19000 newsgroups on your system doesn't mean you have an effective use for any of them. The net needs limits. Xerography provides them. Only a certain amount of text fits on an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, no more no less. Only a certain number of copies can be printed and when the copying stops we can move on. I've come to tell you that xerox is alive. I hope you're ready. Edmundo Vermicelli
September 3, 1997For those who are interested in xerox and xerox-art-related sources, have a look at this announcement: International Copy Art Archive
|
